Behavioral Assessment of Social Skills

Abstract

There has been considerable controversy over the definition of “behavior therapy” (cf. Bellack & Hersen, 1977a, chap. 1). While there is no consensus on precisely what behavior therapy is, there is general agreement that behavioral assessment is a hallmark of the field. Behavior therapists uniformly stress the need for detailed, objective assessment, in which the idiosyncratic behavior pattern of the individual patient (or subject) is systematically and comprehensively analyzed. However, such an assessment is rarely, if ever, achieved. In contrast to the sound methodological basis of much of behavior therapy, a large portion of our assessment methodology has “feet of clay.” With a few notable exceptions (e.g., Goldfried & D’Zurilla, 1969; Patterson, Ray, Shaw, & Cobb, 1969), behavioral assessment strategies have been developed on an ad hoc rather than on an empirical basis. Generally, insufficient attention has been paid to fundamental psychometric requirements (Cone, 1977; Hersen & Bellack, 1977; Jones, 1977). Many assessment procedures are supported more by face validity and consensual agreement than by sound empirical analysis (Bellack, Hersen, & Turner, 1978; Lick & Unger, 1977). In addition, situational factors in the assessment process (such as demand characteristics), and the importance of tailoring an assessment to each individual, typically have received much less attention in practice than they have in the abstract.